by Jamie Wright
We had a good thing going, and we were, like, super Christian about it.
That moms group was the epitome of all the super churchy things I like to make fun of these days. We read the Left Behind series with earnest concern for the pathetic losers we’d be leaving behind in the dust of our own Rapture. We listened to CDs of harmony-heavy girl bands, collected year after year from massive women’s conferences. We baked Amish friendship bread. So yeah, it was like that. But if I’m being totally honest? At the time, that super churchy stuff and those super churchy chicks were super life-giving to me.
Generous and well intentioned, that group of women taught me what it looks like to serve, as I often found myself overwhelmed by the energy of three little boys, and they showed up, again and again, to help in my hour of need. Truly, I probably would not have survived the early years of parenting without the friendship and support of the church ladies, and for that I will always be grateful.
But in the end, it was my experience with their particular brand of faith that tipped the scales of the comfortable Christian life against me.
* * *
My public downfall began when the group’s ultraconservative alpha leader (every group has one) introduced a new book, which the ladies took on with zeal. It was a heavy-handed how-to guide for women learning to be godly mothers / submissive wives / generous lovers / daughters of the risen king / or whatever. Basically, it was a twenty-two-chapter guilt trip for women with husbands and children.
The author’s ideas about a man’s strict authority over his wife made me squeamish right off the bat, but no one else was interested in talking about silly things like misogyny or equality or, y’know, domestic abuse. We read that if we disagreed with our husband’s opinion, we should serve him his favorite meal and carefully present our concerns as tender thoughts, not personal objections. Sensing I was in the minority in my distaste for this suggestion, I didn’t push the issue, but I distinctly thought, Nope.
Then we learned it’s a woman’s responsibility to look pleasing and keep a smokin’-hot body so that her husband won’t be tempted to stray. But no worries. If you let yourself go and push your man into an affair, the book tells you how to fix it. First? Hit the gym and get hot again. Then, to heal your marriage after your husband’s indiscretion, meet him at the door wearing nothing but a large bow to signify giving yourself to him, like, as a gift of reconciliation. And I said nothing to the group, but in my heart I was like, Over my chubby dead body.
There was a chapter about how medication and professional therapy aren’t the answer to clinical depression, because Jesus, and I almost confessed to the group that I must be a faithless, unrepentant sinner, because I survived every single day with the help of a little blue pill and a licensed counselor. But, again, I didn’t speak up. I stayed quiet and kept my thoughts to myself, while in the back of my serotonin-deficient brain, I said, Bull. Shit.
With each new week, I signed my kids into child care, poured myself a cup of coffee, and came to the table silently holding a new grudge against that disgusting book. And each week, afraid to raise eyebrows in this group of women I’d come to call friends, I disabled my mouth by filling it with muffins. I bet I gained six pounds before I finally broke my silence.
Of all the things I could have gone donkey nuts over, and there were many, it was “quiet time” that pushed me over the edge.
In this particular chapter, we read about how “quiet time” was crucial to our spiritual lives, which set off a group lamentation about the overall lack of high-quality quiet time. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of quiet time, it’s kind of a sacred cow in ladies’ church circles. Originating from the ancient discipline of intentionally making space each day to commune with God, today “quiet time” is a spiritual practice most often observed on social media: #quiettime pics usually include a lit candle sitting next to a cup of coffee with visible steam, or maybe a latte with foam art, and an open Bible, preferably out of focus. (It’s called “quiet time” because “candle and coffee time” sounds stupid and “prayer time” was apparently already taken.)
Mothers of young children are famous for trying to fit quiet time in during nap time, which also happens to be laundry time, dishes time, shower time, and stare-off-into-space-in-stunned-silence time. From a teething baby to a buzzing dryer to falling asleep at the table with her eyes open, more often than not, quiet time is a total bust for Mama Bear. So it was no surprise when everyone in the group sadly agreed that a daily quiet time seemed like an impossible luxury.
The book, of course, offered a solution for our quiet-time dilemmas. It said, “Get up earlier.”
Yup. All you have to do is get up and have your quiet time in the dark before anyone else in the entire world is awake, because “you can sleep when you’re dead.”
It said that.
For real.
Like, it actually said, “You can sleep when you are dead.”
I’m not kidding. A bunch of baby-brained, undernourished, zombie moms were being told that what they really needed to make their lives better was less sleep.
I felt sharply defensive of myself and every other sleep-deprived mother who’s put her underwear on backward, sprinkled dry cereal on the floor for her kids, or ordered at a drive-through and mindlessly driven away without her food. Hackles raised, I thought, I love Jesus, but fuck that shit! And there were no muffins close enough to stuff in my face, so those exact words came out of my mouth.
The room went record-scratch silent.
I cleared my throat. “I mean…”
I swallowed. “Well, what I meant to say is…”
I sighed. “Look…I just…I can’t afford to lose any more sleep.”
The group leader looked at me with a strange expression, almost bemused by my act of treason. “But surely you’re not saying sleep is more important than prayer,” she said. “I, for one, am feeling very convicted about the importance of a solid quiet time. God should be our priority.”
Then, with the stern determination of a small-town mayor, she declared, “Tomorrow I will be up before sunrise with my candle and my coffee and my Bible. I can sleep when I am dead!”
Heads on either side of her bobbed in agreement, and I knew I should just drop it. But I’m dumb, so I kept going. “Wait a sec,” I said. “I love prayer. I’m, like, all about prayer. Prayer is my favorite! But I guess I just feel more convicted about being a bad mom because I’m too tired to care for my own kids than I do about not getting up at four a.m. to sit in an empty kitchen reading the Bible by candlelight.”
Her reply was meant to sound friendly, but it had the icy edge of righteous indignation. Poking the air with her index finger, she said, “I guess I’d rather be a bad mom than a bad Christian.”
And then I dove across the table and punched her right in her smug mouth.
Oh jeez, I’m kidding. Relax. I (probably) would never do that.
Actually, I just sat there in silence.
The conversation moved on to the next craptastic chapter (warning parents against the dangers of letting their children get between them—like, literally, don’t let kids sit or walk or lie in the middle—because only God should be at the center of your relationship; fix it, Jesus!), and I sat very still, staring into my coffee. It seemed like the leader was challenging me to make a decision, like I could be a bad mother or I could be a bad Christian, and the choice was mine.
How black-and-white.
How very tidy and simple.
How we love to fit our faith into these neat little boxes to be checked off at the end of the day. I thought it must be nice for the people who just know they’re doing it right, like they’re getting an A in Jesus 101.
Finally I asked, “Why does it have to be quiet?”
I’d been stewing on this for a good ten minutes, and my question was now completely unrelated to
the topic at hand.
“Sorry?” The leader turned to me with a hint of irritation.
“Why does quiet time have to be quiet?” There was a distinct note of bitchiness in my voice at this point. “Why can’t I spend time with God while I’m running the dishwasher and boiling water and chopping onions for dinner and the TV is blaring to keep my kids occupied?”
The leader blinked hard and tilted her head thoughtfully to one side. She looked at me the way you’d look at a homeless person who’s talking to a mailbox. Then she put on her most condescending Sunday-school voice and said, “Because quiet time is a very special time for you to just be quiet with God.”
I was like, “Yeah. I get that. But if my life is loud, why can’t I just be loud with God?”
And—I kid you not—she said, “Well, then it wouldn’t be quiet time, would it?”
* * *
For the record, I’m not anti–quiet time. I actually think it’s a healthy part of any spiritual life, and I try to make a habit of it now that my kids are pretty much all grown up and out of the way. But this happened when my babies were still babies. And I don’t know if you know this, but living with small children is a lot like swimming with piranhas—they may not swoop in and kill you outright, but the nipping and nibbling are relentless.
Sleep was the one thing I knew I had to have if I was gonna be a decent mom for another day. I needed sleep, because my kids needed me to get dressed and go to the park and read the same book four hundred times and kiss boo-boos and settle disputes over Legos and cut a single grape into eleven pieces and scoop turds out of the bathtub and not kill anybody, either by accident or on purpose.
Sleep was life.
I could handle interpretive differences about marriage and womanhood and mental illness that the book stirred up, but nobody was gonna tell me to sleep when I’m dead. That’s going too far.
So when the group leader made that little quip about quiet time needing to be quiet, an unexpected volcano of molten outrage burst forth from the depths of my soul. And even though I still stand by what I said next, I do wish I’d said it with a little less…crazy.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, then call it ‘loud time’! Call it ‘chaos time.’ Call it what it’s supposed to be, which is ‘intentional time’! But do not tell me that God entrusted three kids to my care and protection—knowing full well what a total energy suck they are—with the expectation that I would keep them all alive and, oh, also, get up before the ass crack of dawn to ‘be quiet with Him,’ because ‘I can sleep when I’m dead.’ ”
I was using finger quotes, like a douche. And I wasn’t finished.
In my memory, this impromptu speech is impassioned and articulate, though it’s highly unlikely that was actually the case. If only in my head, what I went on to say came out something like this: “I don’t think that’s how it works. I really don’t. I think God is with us. Like, day in and day out, in the chaos and the noise and the silliness of life, He is there. The God of your precious, untouchable ‘quiet time’ is a present witness to our nonstop lives, never absent for the clamor of our kids’ laughter, their squeals, their skinned knees, their fussing and whining and raging fits in the Target parking lot. God is not withholding Himself from us, waiting for us to come to Him in the wee hours of the morning as a measure of our devotion!
“I mean, if you have the bandwidth to get up an hour earlier every day, with your twelve-dollar scented candle and your fancy French press, good for you! You should totally do that! But don’t you dare act like it’s some kind of deal breaker for the rest of us. Don’t. You. Dare.
“I will not be getting up earlier. Nope. I’m gonna honor God intentionally in my sleep, because I’m pretty sure God wants me to be the very best mother I can possibly be to my boys. I will listen for God’s voice in the wilderness, and at the water park, and under McDonald’s indoor play structure, because that is my daily loud time and God is faithful to meet me in the chaos. If that makes me a bad Christian, then I guess I’m a bad Christian. But tomorrow I’ll be sleeping in. And I’m not even gonna worry about it, because I’m pretty sure I’LL HAVE PLENTY OF QUIET TIME WITH GOD WHEN I’M DEAD!”
Crickets.
There was no mic drop, no standing ovation, no vigorous applause from my fellow wrung-out baby wranglers. What followed was several long seconds of intensely awkward silence, punctuated by a sniffle on one side of the room and a cleared throat on the other, until someone had the presence of mind to slide the entire tray of muffins to the center of the table. To my great relief, and by the healing touch of simple carbs, life and casual conversation resumed. It was not a rousing victory speech, but still, I did win a battle that day; I expressed a strong difference of opinion in front of the Church Ladies Who Know All Things…and I lived.
Anyway, the whole point is that long before I became the Very Worst Missionary—hell, long before I became any kind of missionary at all—I had to get comfortable in my own skin as a Pretty Bad Christian.
In the midst of my growing disillusionment with the club, I soon found myself in the company of a small society of other no-nonsense churchgoers. To the rest of the church community, we were like the kids who smoke under the bleachers, the misfits who suppressed laughter every time the pastor prayed for the Lord to “come in him” or “penetrate him deeply.” We had each taken a vastly different route to get there but somehow ended up in the same place—on the outer fringe of Evangelicalism, considered barely more than outsiders by those who occupied the good seats, because of our vocal questions, critical opinions, or (gasp!) progressive theologies.
By then, Steve and I had run the gamut of ministries. We’d done the small groups and the weekend retreats and the golf tournaments and the craft nights. The church had us spread so thin, it was like every day of the week there was somewhere one of us was supposed to be without the other. So, to save our sanity and our family, we swore off all of them and instead looked for a way to serve God and others side by side.
We soon found our ministry niche as leaders in the church youth group, where Steve and I learned that we were happiest when our home was filled with pizza crusts and Cheetos crumbs and packs of wild teenagers. Being in our midtwenties, our relative youthfulness made us a natural fit, but it was Steve’s experience as a beat cop and my history as a skanky slut that really gave us an edge. We had good intuition and personal perspective for the complicated lives of the fourteen-to-eighteen crowd.
We welcomed high school kids into our home and into our hearts with genuine love, and without condemnation, and this made us popular with students and parents alike. We became a magnet couple for troubled teens—or, perhaps more precisely, for the fretful parents of troubled teens, who secretly hoped we could transform their kids into good little Christians at a weekend campout, or during a rousing game of “Butts Up.”
The youth pastor and his wife quickly became our closest friends, aided by the fact that they weren’t just a couple of friends; they were “couple friends.” I can’t begin to tell you how awesome it is to find couple friends—like, where both of you actually enjoy hanging out with both of them. It’s a rare and magical thing to behold, like a nun on a motorcycle, and should be cherished.
Being couple friends allowed us a million hours together, mostly eating, drinking, and solving all the world’s problems. And it was during these many hours that Jeff and Kathy inadvertently demonstrated what it means to “be the church,” as they were kind and generous, openhanded with their gifts, and respectful of every individual’s faith process. With Jeff and Kathy there were no facades. No masks. No striving to impress.
Jeff was quirky, direct, and abrasive. He didn’t waste time with things like polite conversation, and he didn’t treat everyone like they deserved his undivided attention. To be honest, he could be kind of a dick if you got in his way—but when you stepped aside, you’d find he was already headed t
o serve someone specific and you just happened to be standing in his path. Not everyone liked Jeff, and Jeff didn’t care, which made me like him even more. I could respect a guy who followed Jesus and was unapologetically himself.
And Kathy was my soul sister. She was honest without being arrogant, sweet without being syrupy, loyal without being delusional, and encouraging without being condescending. She was also one of those cool outdoorsy chicks who know how to tie knots and start fires and fight grizzly bears and shit like that. Her house was cute and comfortable enough to make you feel at home, but not so sparkling clean and spectacular that you’d be mortified if you accidentally knocked over your beer during a race for the last piece of pie…(cough)…or something. She served incredible meals on paper plates and champagne in red Solo cups, and she didn’t stress on the rare occasion that dessert might not look as good as it tasted. Through Kathy I learned the value of prioritizing people over perfection.
Eventually, life would take us in vastly different directions (one to the equatorial tropics, the other to the Arctic Circle), but I can say I learned more about how to live like Jesus during the handful of years I had Kathy on my team than from all the other people I know combined.
* * *
So, there’s this funny thing that happens when you get real in front of people: It’s that they start to get real in front of you.
Surely you’ve figured this out by now, but I’ll say it anyway: I’m a good faker. Or at least I used to be. I’d played the tough girl, the teen mom, the happy wife, the good Christian, and at twenty-six years old, I still thought I was supposed to look for someone who was better than me, and then be them. Not learn from them or be inspired by them or follow their example—be them. I had always believed my own nature was meant to be suppressed and hidden or, if at all possible, destroyed to make room for someone better. Someone tougher. Someone smarter. Someone kinder. Someone cooler. Someone else. Always someone else.